‘A sanitized view of America’: inside Trump’s campaign to erase US history from national parks
Why this matters: environmental and climate reporting with long-term consequences.
Critics say the Trump administration is trying to rewrite and whitewash history by removing and altering scores of signs on public lands Jerry Bransford, a former US National Park Service (NPS) ranger, has always had a deep connection with the land he grew up on – and the land hundreds of feet below it. His great-great-grandfather, Materson “Mat” Bransford, was one of the earliest explorers of Mammoth Cave in south-central Kentucky, the largest known cave system on the planet.But for decades, Mat wasn’t paid for his work. Enslavers rented him out for $100 a year to a man who wanted to turn the site into a tourist attraction – what would later become Mammoth Cave national park. Continue reading...